Baku City Circuit Exec Dir Arif Rahimov, promoter of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, "hit back" on Wednesday at "ignorant" criticism of his race by Formula 1's new owner Liberty Media, according to Claire Bloomfield of REUTERS. Rahimov was reacting to comments made by Liberty CEO Greg Maffei, who said that Baku paid a big fee but did "nothing to build the long-term brand and health of the business." Rahimov: "It does upset us, obviously. Mr. Maffei has been involved in F1 for less than half a year. ... We've been working on this project for three years now so we have more experience with F1 than them. I think saying something like this is ignorant, but we'll see." Rahimov, whose race made its debut on the calendar last season, said that he was "surprised by Maffei's comments." Rahimov: "We truly believe the race was a success. It was something that was commented on from all the various stakeholders across the board. The fans loved the racing action, they loved what they saw as entertainment." The promoter said that there had been "minimal contact with Liberty to date." Rahimov added, "From a business perspective we've never had a conversation or dialogue" (REUTERS, 3/15).
TASK FORCE: MOTORSPORT's Johnathan Noble reported F1 Managing Dir Ross Brawn will "set up a small task force of independent experts" to help shape his vision for a better F1, as he "targets a proper investigation on how to improve overtaking." With the self-interest of teams having impacted on rule changes over recent years, Brawn "plans to hire a small panel" of well-recognized figures to "get involved and deliver proposals that it believes will help improve grand prix racing" (MOTORSPORT.com, 3/16).
HOLDING BACK: The BBC's Gary Rose reported Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner said that F1 teams "deliberately held back the true potential of their cars during testing." Horner "played down his team's low-key performance." Ferrari "impressed in Barcelona" as it finished winter testing fastest. Horner said, "There is a lot of sandbagging in testing. Nobody really knows what specification each other's cars are running in. ... We've never won a testing world championship but we are confident we have had a good pre-season" (BBC, 3/16).
